It is known to provide an outdoor swimming pool, particularly a swimming pool intended for private use, with covering members which may be moved manually into positions across the pool, to cover the pool when it is no longer intended to use the pool. Such coverings members were primarily intended to prevent children from accidentally falling into the pool when the pool was not being used by adults, and was additionally effective to prevent detritus from blowing into the pool. However, conventionally such covering members have been seated on, extending between, peripheral margins bounding the pool, and have been of rigid construction. Because of the difficulty of moving the covering members into position, they were not generally used when the pool was vacated for short periods of time (e.g. overnight) and were used only when it was intended not to use the pool for an extended period of time (e.g. over the winter period). This meant that there was a considerable residual danger of children falling into the pool during the short periods when adults were not using the pool.
To increase the ease with which a pool could be covered, and hence to reduce this possible residual danger, a suggestion has been made to provide a covering structure which could be moved automatically between a raised position in which access to the pool and consequent use thereof was permitted, and a lowered position in which access to the pool by (for example) small children was prevented. Thus, this relatively simple means of closing the pool tended to ensure that the pool was closed when it was being vacated by adults for relatively short periods of time (e.g. overnight).
However, such previous suggestions have involved merely a covering structure which when in its lowered position seated on and extended between peripheral margins bounding the pool: other than providing protection to bathers using the pool against directly over-head sunshine, or wholly vertically-falling rain, there has been no previous suggestion to use the idea of a power operated pool covering to provide protection to persons swimming in the pool, and persons sojourning on a patio adjacent to the pool, against adverse weather conditions.